The Hon. Scott Morrison MP Prime Minister SPEECH A MODERN MANUFACTURING STRATEGY FOR AUSTRALIA NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, ACT THURSDAY 1 OCTOBER 2020 EO&E… PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, Sabra. It's good to be back here again at the Press Club and this all-important week leading up to next year’s- next week's I should say, Budget. And it's great to be joined by so many of my colleagues here today. The Deputy Prime Minister, of course, Michael McCormack, and I commend him on his tremendous speech he gave yesterday. The new Richard Mercer of Australian politics with his calls for Australians to go to bush and support with the harvest, I strongly endorse his comments yesterday. It's good to have the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, and Mathias will be leaving us at the end of this year. They'll be very big shoes to fill in our Government, and this will be his last Budget and I want to thank you, Mathias for the tremendous work you’ve done. Not just on this Budget, but the six prior to it. It has been a herculean effort. Today the Treasurer is still back there with a sharpened pencil as he works through the time touches of the Budget for next week. I also want to thank the Treasurer for the tremendous job he's been doing together with Mathias Cormann to bring forward what will be a very important Budget next week. To Karen Andrews who joins us here today - what I'm presenting to you today is absolutely the product of her labours over not just many weeks, but over many, many months, and I'm looking forward to presenting that today. Karen, and I thank you for your leadership in this area in particular. We're joined by other ministers, of course, as well. We have Keith Pitt in resources and energy and Angus Taylor - sorry, resources and Northern Australia, I haven't made any changes, Angus, don't worry, or Keith. You'll be pleased to know, nor do I intend to. They're both doing a tremendous job in all of those portfolios. They share a department together and they’ve got it absolutely cranking on all cylinders. And tomorrow you'll hear in Sydney from the assistant minister Ben Morton who’ll be speaking more about the Government’s deregulation agenda. Can I begin - can I also acknowledge Nev Power, I’ve just seen him here, as the chair of the National COVID Commission. And Nev, thank you for the great work you have been doing with the Commission. As you know, together with Andrew Liveris, what we have been speaking about today has been importantly informed by the great work that you and your team have been doing in its previous and now its new form. Can I begin today by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people of course, their elders - past, present and emerging for the future. Can I also, as is my custom, to acknowledge and pay my respects to any veterans or serving members of the Australian defence forces who are here with us today or joining us from outside this place and simply say on behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your service to our country. The 2020-2021 Budget, to be delivered by the Treasurer next [Tuesday], will be arguably one of the most important, if not the most important since the end of the Second World War. This year, the global economy is forecast to contract by around four and a half per cent. The world economy during the GFC declined by 0.1 per cent. So in simple terms, the economic contraction we’re expecting this year in the global economy is 45 times greater than the GFC. The scale of what is occurring today is incredibly sobering. Never before have we experienced a global recession of this magnitude in a truly modern, interconnected world and global economy, no longer insulated by geography and old technology. Global recessions now occur in real time. So this Budget will be necessarily different in scale to those we have seen in many generations. It will respond responsibly to the challenge of our time and consistent with the principles that we laid down at the outset of the pandemic back in March. The Budget will confirm the strong plan we have to recover from the COVID-19 recession and to build our economy for the future. To cushion the blow of the pandemic recession. To recover what’s been lost - the jobs, the livelihoods, the hours, the incomes, the customers, the clients. But importantly to take new ground by rebuilding our economy for the future. And we’ll do this, importantly, while honouring our guarantee to the essential services that Australians rely on - the schools, hospitals, Medicare, aged care, disability services. And we’ll do it while keeping Australians safe. And we’ll do it without increasing taxes. That's what the 2020-21 Budget is all about. The work though, is already underway. Unemployment was falling. More Australians were in jobs than ever before, the female participation rate at an all time high. More working age people were off welfare and into jobs. Our AAA Credit Rating had been secured. And our Budget was back in balance. This meant that, as the pandemic hit, we could act quickly and confidently to cushion the blow. Treasury advises that some 700,000 additional jobs would have been lost in measured unemployment were it not for the measures the government undertook - JobKeeper, JobSeeker, cashflow support and many, many more. We are also working to recover what has been lost. 760,000 jobs that were either lost or reduced to zero hours as the COVID crisis hit, have already come back into our economy. This is a great tribute to the resilience of Australians and the Australian economy, its fighting spirit, the Australians who make our economy work each and every day. Our effective unemployment rate has fallen from 14.9 per cent, as the crisis hit, back to 9.3 per cent. But that’s not good enough. there are further risks, there are further challenges ahead, there are further unknowns. We are not through this yet not by a long shot. And there is still much more to be done. We are rebuilding our economy for the future through our JobMaker economic plan that I first spoke of right here at this platform. Our plan for affordable and reliable energy will secure our liquid fuel reserves and lower emissions. It will get the gas we need for manufacturing to succeed, for households to have more money in their pockets, to firm up the reliability of renewables, like solar and wind, and to transition our energy economy into the future. This transition will be guided by our comprehensive technology investment roadmap, released by Angus Taylor recently. To deliver reliable, scalable, lower cost, lower emissions technologies to underwrite our economy over the next 30 years and beyond. A plan not driven by taxes but by technology. We’re delivering lower taxes for businesses and individuals. Australians are already benefiting from the tax cuts made in the last two budgets. Just this year alone, in the billions. The small and medium-sized businesses tax rate has been cut to 26 per cent and the instant asset write off extended and expanded to investments of up to $150,000. Australians are keeping more of what they earn, as we promised they would. But there is still more to be done and there will be more next week. Major changes have been introduced to how we do skills training. Our $1 billion JobTrainer program with the states and territories is boosting the number of training places in this year alone by 340,000 places, that’s good news for school leavers and those who are looking for those training places, coming out of jobs. We have secured a new heads of agreement on skills reform, as I said we would do, with the States and Territories through the National Cabinet to ensure Australians acquire the skills they need for the jobs that businesses need them to be able to do. The National Skills Commission and Commissioner has been established to guide these investments, not just by the Commonwealth but by the States and Territories also. The Government has committed $2.8 billion to keep up to 180,000 apprentices in this country on the tools at some 90,000 small and medium-sized businesses through to the end of March next year. And yesterday, the Education Minister Dan Tehan announced an extra 12,000 places for students going to university next year to help them upskill and get job ready. We are working to fix the problems in our industrial relations system so we can employ more people. The Attorney-General Christian Porter has brought unions and employer groups together in search of common ground to boost employment, to grow our economy. One thing is very clear from this process, and particularly recent events out at Port Botany, that we cannot afford “business as usual” in industrial relations. It keeps people out of jobs. We continue to bring forward record investments in infrastructure in our three key infrastructure grids, as the Deputy Prime Minister well knows and leads that work - our transport grid, our water grid and of course our energy grid. Major projects like Inland Rail, Western Sydney Airport, the North South Connector in Adelaide, Stage 3A of Gold Coast Light Rail in Queensland, the Bunbury Outer Ring Road in Western Australia.